Sounds of Silence
by carlycarter
Summary: ....Juliet considers Kate Austen to be many things, but 'Breakable' is not among them..... Season 3 Kate & Juliet- not strictly femslash, more of a friendshipy type of thing thus far
1. Chapter 1

_----Just a little fun with my two favourite girls because i'm procrastinating finishing my other fics._

_----Set in Season 3. Though I've decided to make Juliet somewhat of an outcast after she comes to live with the other plane crash survivors at the beach. _

_**Sounds of Silence**_

1.

The discussion takes place, as always, surrounding her and not including her. No one asks for her opinion, no one addresses her personally. It was something she had become used to since relocating to the beach. No one liked her, no one trusted her, no one wanted her around. And it suited her just fine that they ignored her, treated her as if she didn't exist. It was so much easier to convince herself that she didn't. That this was all a dream, and nothing mattered anymore. And so she sat silently, but not quite untouched by the panic building around her.

"Has anyone seen Kate?" Someone asked to no one in particular.

"Not since yesterday." Someone else answered.

"You think something happened to her?"

"Maybe she just took off some place?"

"Why would she do that?"

"Why does Kate do anything?"

The swirl of voices is silenced for a moment, as no one has an answer.

"Should we go look for her?" Someone finally suggests.

"She'll come back when she wants to." Someone else answers.

"She wouldn't take off, not now, when we've finally got that transmitter working. Any minute now someone will pick up our signal. We're finally going home."

"You're kidding yourself if you think that the thing is working."

"You'll be eating your words when someone picks up our signal and comes to rescue us."

"No one is coming to rescue us."

"We're not going home."

"Do you have to disagree with EVERYTHING I say?"

"Maybe THEY took her." Someone suggests, bring the conversation back to Kate.

"They?"

"The others."

Juliet cringes at the term. All too aware of her own otherness. All too aware of the part she had played.

"Why would they do that?"

"Why not?"

"The others are gone, anyway."

"Not quite gone."

Although no one mentions her by name, they all turn to look at her in that moment. Juliet refuses to look up at them, but she can feel the eyes boring into her. She feels the need to say something after being included in the conversation. And so, without glancing up in their direction, she utters softly, tauntingly "Maybe Kate doesn't want to go home."

They all stare at her, as if she has two heads. Not want to go home? How could anyone not want to go home?

"That's just a crazy thing to say." Sawyer spits at her.

"There isn't a whole lot waiting for her." Jack finally concedes.

"What would you know?" Sawyer demands.

"More than you do." Jack answers.

"Even Jail has gotta be better than dying on this god forsaken place." Sayid interjects.

"That's beside the point, Kate won't end up in jail, She's too smart to let them beat her." Charlie pipes in.

Juliet turns away from their pointless droning on and on. It mattered very little to her one way or the other. She was so sick of Kate. What was so damn great about Kate that had everyone falling over themselves just because she'd been missing a few hours. What was so damn great that Jack and Sawyer were falling over themselves to claim her. Had they forgotten the way she had betrayed them both? Had they forgotten the things she was capable of? Forgotten that she was a cold blooded killer? Forgotten that she evaded capture for god knows how many years? Kate didn't need that bunch of idiots charging off to rescue her.

"What's it to you anyway, blondie?" Sawyer eyes Juliet suspiciously, turning his attention from the bickering crowd.

"Nothing at all." She tells him, and she means it. It doesn't matter one bit to her if she lives here, if she dies here, let alone if Kate lives or dies or whatever the hell they think has happened to her.

"Weren't you the last one to talk to Kate anyway?" Sayid asks her.

"I saw you talking to her yesterday." Hurley agrees.

"At the campfire." Charlie adds.

"That's just ridiculous. Kate and I don't speak." Juliet answers in her own defence. _Talking to Kate? That was just insane. _

"Oh, so you sayin you got something against Kate?" Sawyer asks

"No more than she has something against me." But even as she utters the words, Juliet can see that they just don't care about the way Kate has treated her. She is an 'other', she has no rights. She is sub human as far as the rest of them are concerned.

"Have you done something to Kate, Juliet?" Jack asks.

Juliet laughs then. "Have I done something to her?" Juliet scoffs at the idea. "Tell me, Jack, what is it you think I could do to her? She is stronger than me, crazier than me, She'd eat me alive."

Instead of looking past her, looking right through her, as if she were nothing, the men are all eyeing her suspiciously now. Even Jack. This, Juliet thinks to herself, is not so great.

"You find this amusing?" Sayid wants to know.

"Not in the slightest, I find it rather dull. If you'll excuse me." Juliet gets up from her place in the sand, her place that only moment ago had been peaceful and secluded. Before those voices had interrupted her tranquillity. Before those men started looking at her as if she were a criminal. She preferred it when she had been invisible to them.

"Where are you going?" Sayid asks Juliet.

"Got some place to be?" Sawyer asks Juliet.

"What have you done with Kate?" Jack asks Juliet again.

Juliet shakes her head, wearily. There was positively nothing she could say to make it any better.

Like it or not, she had to live with these people. They were all stranded here for God knows how long, maybe forever. And if they think she has done something to their precious Kate, then heaven help her. Like it or not, Juliet finds herself as a one woman search party taking off into the wilderness looking for Kate Austen.

Fantastic.


	2. Chapter 2

2.

Kate had heard the others calling her name throughout the day. First Jack, then Sawyer, then Sayid, Charlie, Claire, Sun, and Hurley. Too many voices she no longer cared to keep track. She had ignored them, each and every one. She had hidden herself, still, silent, as the voices grew closer, then diminished into the distance.

She couldn't say why exactly she had done it. She hadn't any plans when she had left the safety of the camp at the beach. She had only needed to get away, just for a little while, she told herself. And as she sat, alone, and heard the voices calling her name, it became more and more unbearable to answer. Simply unthinkable to imagine another person so close to her. She craved solitude. Peace. The comfort of the lonely darkness. She had cried, though if anyone asked her what she was crying for, she would not have been able to answer.

What she had not heard, what she had not anticipated, was the silent approach of the other woman some hours after the others had stopped calling her name relentlessly. Before Kate realised anyone was near, Juliet Burke was towering over her. Kate was horrified at her own reticence, sitting so vulnerable, letting the enemy sneak up on her. That's exactly who Juliet Burke was, the enemy. Who Juliet Burke had been, more correctly. Now she was just Juliet, just that pathetic outsider, abandoned by even her own people. Just another pathetic, lost, doomed soul, just like the rest of them.

"Everyone is looking for you." Juliet tells her as she kicks at the ground with her shoes. "But I suppose you know that already. I'm sure you heard the others calling your name." Juliet adds brightly.

To which Kate replies with silence.

"Is there some sort of problem, Kate?"Juliet asks, sighing wearily. There is the faintest glimmer of irritation behind her false bright tone, and not the slightest bit of compassion or concern.

Again, Juliet is greeted with only silence. This frustrates Juliet more than any answer would have.

"Right then, enough of this nonsense. Get up, we're going back to the beach." Juliet orders.

Kate almost smiles, shaking her head. "I'm sorry, You seem to be think that you can snap your fingers and i'll come running?"

"Get up." Juliet tells her again, sick of the spoilt girl and her silly games. She reached for the other woman, grabbing her arm, and attempting, unsuccessfully, to pull her to her feet.

"Don't touch me." Kate orders her, fire in her eyes.

Juliet sighs again, as she runs her hand through her hair. She casts a look over her shoulder. She could easily call out for Jack or Sawyer or any one of them to come and deal with the problematic girl. But something stops her. Something causes her to take a deep breath, to plaster a friendly smile on her face. Something beckons her to crouch down to Kate's level, staring her in the eyes, and ask her, "Would you care to tell me what the problem is?"

"What's it to you?" Kate answers her question with a question.

"Well." Juliet begins. "Your friends back at the beach are under the mistaken impression that I've murdered you in cold blood, chopped your body up into tiny little pieces and buried what was left of you out here in the jungle. And if you don't watch out, I just might do it." It's not a genuine threat. Juliet knows that in any physical confrontation with Kate, she is likely to come off second best. She isn't sure why she bothered to answer Kate at all, it's not like she is the one who owes Kate an explanation.

Kate laughs at the other woman's words. And Juliet realises that was the exact response she was hoping for. She stops to look at Kate in that moment, stops to appreciate the way her eyes light up when she smiles.

"Is that supposed to scare me?" Kate asks bravely. And yet, something about the other woman does frighten her. There has always been something alarming about Juliet, her frighteningly cold composure.

"I see." Juliet says. "So this is how it's going to be." She sits herself cross legged on the ground, opposite Kate, raising her eyebrows, and looking to Kate expectantly.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Kate wants to know.

"There isn't a lot of point in me going back there without you. I'll be crucified. So i'll just wait right here for you to finish off whatever the hell it is that you're doing. Though, surely, this is something you could be doing back at the beach without causing a mass hysteria by taking off into the jungle unannounced like that."

Kate's frustration is rising now, at this intrusion into her space. At this woman who thinks she can sit here, uninvited, who thinks she can tell Kate what to do.

Kate stands to her feet, and heads off without a word to Juliet, without so much as looking at her.

"Oh so now that I've just got comfortable, you want to leave. That'd be right." Juliet calls out playfully after the other woman. Unlike Kate, Juliet takes a moment to wipe the dust from her trousers as she stands to her feet.

It's become a game now. A challenge for Juliet. She can't let Kate get away from her so easily. She wants to know what Kate is doing out here. She wants to know why Kate would take off like that. She wants to know everything about her. For the first time in god knows how long, Juliet finds herself caring about something, about someone.

She smiles to herself as she follows after Kate. Kate is fast, but not fast enough. And Juliet finds herself enjoying the thrill of the chase. For a brief moment Kate turns back around to look at her, and Juliet is almost certain she sees that same thrill in Kate's eyes.

Then Juliet sees it in front of her. The trap. She recognises it as one of many that the 'others' have placed all across the island, to lure unsuspecting people. She tries to call out a warning to the woman up ahead, but the words get stuck in her throat. She finds strength to pick up her pace, and before Kate knows what has happened, Juliet has tackled her to the ground.


	3. Chapter 3

3.

Juliet hears that grinding, snapping, sound. That unmistakable sound of human bones breaking into two. Juliet closes her eyes for a moment, inhaling sharply. She waits for the sharp searing pain to pierce her. And nothing happens. Still, moments go by before she comes to the obvious conclusion- it wasn't her bone that broke. Then, Juliet tells herself she is imagining things. Because she considers Kate Austen to be many, many things, but 'breakable' is not among them.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Kate demands angrily. As Juliet had pushed Kate to the ground, she had landed awkwardly on top of her. "Get the fuck off me." Kate spat at her.

Juliet stands to her feet as gracefully as she is able to do, and once again, this time entirely subconsciously, she takes a moment to shake the dusty dirt from her clothing. With Kate's questioning eyes upon her, Juliet's hand ventures to the not-so-carefully concealed trap. Kate is sitting there, shuffling away from Juliet instinctively, cradling her left arm in her right protectively. Juliet pieces this together with the sound of the bone snapping in two, so a broken arm. Her left one. Not so bad. Juliet is still taken aback to think of anything about that woman being broken. And yet she takes a moment to think just how very well that word fits Kate.

Kate looks to Juliet, then to the trap, in confusion, shaking her head wearily.

"I was trying to stop you falling into this trap," Juliet spells it out for the girl who is still looking up at her dazed and confused. "You could show a bit of gratitude, although I suppose that's too much to ask for."

"Gratitude? " Kate asks incredulously. "You probably put that god damn thing there in the first place." Kate accuses her. Juliet waits for Kate to follow that accusation up with _'....and you just knocked me to the ground and broke my 'god damn' arm.'_ She waits for it, because its all she hears from people, accusation. Even when she is genuinely trying to do the right thing. Juliet doesn't know why she bothers anymore. So she turns from Kate, gazing up at that trap, slightly shaking her own head, smiling to herself, forcing herself to smile.

Kate says nothing else, perhaps merely because she doesn't want to betray to Juliet that she is injured , that she is in pain.

Juliet sighs. It was true, after all, her people had put this trap there. And if Juliet thinks very hard about it, she had known that trap was there all along. Still, she isn't going to stand there and let Kate walk all over her.

"You're welcome, by the way, Kate. And perhaps if you were watching where you were going in the first place, you might have saved me the trouble. Or are you blind as well as insane? That's the trap we use for very stupid people. We haven't caught a single person yet in that thing. I am disappointed, Kate, I thought you of all people were smarter than that."

"No, you never thought that." Kate tells her. It's true also, Juliet never thought of Kate as particularly intelligent. And yet it's unnerving to hear that Kate knows so much about what Juliet thinks.

"Gratitude?" Kate mumbles under her breath, this time followed by a bitter laugh, though she refuses to look Juliet in the eye. "You people are unbelievable."

It hurts, the way Kate lumps Juliet in with "_you people"_ as if every thing that any one of them had ever done was Juliet's own responsibility. Juliet feels guilt, undoubtedly, for the part she played. But the part she played was minor. The part she played was written for her, orchestrated by Ben, It wasn't her intention, she didn't want to be here any more than the rest of them. Still, there was no point in telling any of that to Kate Austen. So Juliet doesn't bother.

"This whole thing is all your god damn fault in the first place." Kate finishes.

Juliet wants to ask Kate what "_whole thing"_ exactly is her fault. She is utterly sick of being blamed for every '_god damn_' thing that happens on that beach. Bitterness creeps in, and she finds herself raising her voice a tone, unable to hide the bitterness beneath her sarcasm.

"Oh I'm sorry, Did I tear your plane in half with my bare hands and cause it to go hurtling through the sky crash landing on this god forsaken place? I apologise. Really, very very sorry about that Kate, because, trust me when I tell you, my life was a whole lot better before you lot showed up here and fucked everything up!"

"Nothing is your fault, is it?!" Kate demanded to know. "Nothing is your responsibility. I'm so sick of you, you think you can do whatever you want, you think you make the rules- well not anymore. Your people left you here, how does that feel? It's just you now. And I am so sick of you."

Kate stands clumsily to her feet, deliberately trying not to put weight on her injured arm. And something stirs in Juliet. Some deep primitive drive, some part of her former doctor self, that can't help but want to take care of Kate. Some part of her that can't stand to see someone injured and not intervene. And so she doesn't stop to hesitate before she reaches forward and touches Kate lightly on the wrist.

"Don't touch me!" Kate demands. Kate punctuates her sentence by picking up a rock in her good hand and hurling it at Juliet. It hits Juliet in the leg, and while it angers her, she can't help but find herself amused, as if Kate were a child throwing a tantrum. She can't help but think that Kate's aim can't be THAT bad, and if Kate wanted to hit her in the head with a rock and crack her skull open, she would have simply done so.

"Does it make you feel better, Kate? Taking it out on me?" Juliet finds, alarmingly, that her voice is calmer, kinder, than she would like. It surprises her. Absent mindedly she rubs her leg where Kate's weapon of choice had struck her. "Really, Kate, Does it change anything? You're still stuck here, I'm still stuck here."

"Not for long." Kate answers. But her tone isn't argumentative anymore. It isn't hopeful either. It's sad. Defeated. And Juliet wonders if it's a sadness because Kate doesn't believe her own words, doesn't believe they will be rescued. Or if, as Juliet couldn't help but suspect, Kate really doesn't want to go home.

With those words, Kate turns from the other woman cradling her injured arm tight against her chest.

"I think it's broken." Juliet tells her.

"No kidding."

"Let me see. I am a doctor."

"_Jack_ is a doctor." She tells Juliet. "_You,_ You're some kind of kidnapping researcher freak."

"Well I still know a broken arm when I see one. Does it hurt?" Juliet asks as she reaches forward and takes Kate's arm gently in her hands.

"No." Kate answers her, though this time she doesn't pull away. As if she is satisfied enough with the way she has attacked Juliet with her words, with her rocks, and now she just doesn't want to play anymore.

But Juliet isn't quite done. "Really?" She asks as she places her hands more forcefully than necessary as she fingers the broken bone, assessing the damage. Juliet can't help the smug satisfied smile that crosses her face as her touch causes Kate to shriek out in pain.

"Ok, it fucking hurts!" Kate tells her. "Happy now?" Kate asks as she pulls her arm angrily away.

Juliet fights back the urge to apologise, to tell Kate the she just couldn't resist, that Kate was the one being mean and spiteful and childish and pathetic, and Kate deserved it.

"I need to re-align the bones. It will hurt less once I've done it." Juliet tells her, but she can see already that Kate won't be convinced. She has blown her chance.

"No way in hell that you're touching me again." Kate tells her. The words are unnecessary though, Juliet can see all she needs to know in Kate's mistrusting angry eyes.

"Then let's go back to the beach, let Jack take a look at it. Tell him that big bad Juliet broke your arm."

"I'm not going back there, and I'm certainly not going back there with you." Kate tells her.

"Well fine, we'll just sit here then. I'm sure Jack heard you screaming all the way from the beach anyway. I'm sure he's on his way here right now to rescue you from me. Hell, I'm sure they heard you in Australia. Sayid won't need that transmitter anymore."

Juliet speaks merely for the sake of making conversation rather than anything else. Because it is making her squirm, the way that Kate is just standing there, looking at her, saying nothing.


End file.
